Archive for the ‘restaurants’ Category

I have to admit that I actually did catch the jelly wrestling at the Oxford Tavern. It’s one of those places that’s impossible to miss, situated on the corner of Crystal Street and New Canterbury Road and a direct shot from Leichhardt to the Portuguese chicken shops of Petersham. I was always curious about the place, but never took the initiative to visit until an English girlfriend of mine decided to hold her birthday party there. Gorgeous girls inviting you to drink with them and watch other gals slug it out in Jell-O in the wrestling arena. I went in the name of friendship. Obviously.

The birthday girl had promised to get in and actually do a wrestling match, but she chickened out at the last minute. Her loss. The wicked ways of the Oxford are now officially gone. As of this week, it is now the newest hipster bar from the Drink ‘N Dine folks who’ve brought us The Norfolk, Queenies, Santa Barbara and House of Crabs. There may still be some wickedness about, but it will certainly be more respectable. Possibly. You can still pretend to be naughty if you order one of the “Swinging Tit” cocktails (if you guessed that’s pisco, sage, hibiscus and pineapple, you’re a better man barman than me).

Here are the full press deets, folks. Pool tables, pulled pork and, yes, even a ladies night. Hey, at least they didn’t go all schmick on us. But if Petersham is on the cool-kid map, the rest of the dominos in the Inner West are sure to follow soon. Expect your next Twothousand bar reviews to come from Sydneyham, Tempe and Ashfield.

After that, the only logical place left for the fringe will be out West. Time for you real estate guys to start sniffing out Auburn and Lakemba. The ‘Outy’ (outer inner west) is now officially the new underground. You heard it here first:

The Oxford Tavern

The Oxford Tavern opens on December 13th, 2013. Previously infamous for all the wrong (right?) reasons, it’s Drink N Dine’s first foray into the Inner Wild West. The strippers have gone, so have the pokies, but the food and booze is back with a schnitzel-fuelled vengeance.

It’s a neighbourhood boozer. Beer barn with sports and plenty of taps out front, while out the back Rita’s Lounge is a late night honky tonk open till 3am. A grand piano, jungle beer garden and the worlds longest* bar alsoawaits.

Pull up a stool and get busy drinking. There is a huge beer selection. If you don’t like beer, that’s cool. There’s plenty of beer and there is also some beer to choose from. Do you cocktail? Take a Slow Dazzle (Black Strap Rum, Campari, Lime, Pineapple), wear a Black Velvet (Stout & Champagne), relax in a Banana Hammock (Sugar Cane, Rye, Banana, Lime), or witness A Swinging Tit (Pisco, Sage, Hibiscus, Pineapple). Plus a throwback wine list to help you reek of the sexy seventies.

There are weekly specials like steak night, ladies night, $3 tacos and $10 burgers as well as pool tables! Something for everyone, all the time.

The Oxford Tavern is open seven days a week, from 12pm till late with Rita’s staying open til 3am Fridays & Saturdays. The BBQ opens on Australia Day and then every Friday to Sunday from midday till it runs out.

Drink ‘n’ Dine was started by Jaime Wirth, Michael Delany and James Miller in November 2010. Together they have opened The Norfolk, The Abercrombie, The Carrington, The Forresters, Queenies, Santa Barbara, The Californian and House of Crabs.

Pre-empting his well-publicisedpush exit from Guillaume at Bennelong next month, chef Guillaume Brahimi has already announced his sequel to his French fine-dining restaurant, which this year received a top-rated Three Hats by the Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide (whether the extra hat was deserved, or just a pity vote by his food journo peers, is worthy of another blog discussion).

Brahimi’s follow-up to his iconic Sydney Opera House restaurant will move to Paddington, at the stalwart Darcy’s Restaurant site. It looks like a fantastic move for Brahimi. Darcy’s has long been an iconic Italian restaurant to the Eastern Suburbs’ moneyed set – a seamless fit for Brahimi’s upmarket French cuisine – but for years has floundered in terms of public image and critical reception (I never ate there, nor was ever inclined to, so I can’t comment about the food). Brahimi will be giving a greater seasonal focus to his skilled French cooking to a very cosy corner of Paddington that’s crawling distance that other hatted local, The Four in Hand.

So what do you think of the move? Is it a face-saving lateral shift, a more intimate improvement, a downgrade for a chef who’s presided over the highest-profile restaurant space in Sydney, or something entirely different?

For more on the move, here’s today’s press release:

MEDIA RELEASE-

GUILLAUME BRAHIMI ANNOUNCES HIS NEW RESTAURANT- OPENING 2014

After much anticipation, chef and restaurateur Guillaume Brahimi has announced that he will open a new Sydney restaurant in early 2014.

Brahimi and his team will move into the beautiful and historic Darcy’s Restaurant site in Paddington, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, and will reopen as guillaume by Easter 2014. The new restaurant will see his award-winning team continue the high standard they have become known for at the iconic three- hatted Guillaume at Bennelong.

The restaurant will reflect Brahimi’s philosophy of high quality produce-driven food and will serve an ever-changing menu focused on the seasonal produce of the day.

Brahimi said “My team and I are so excited at the prospect of this new restaurant. It is a fresh start for us in a wonderful venue, full of character and history, a real Sydney institution. We have some ambitious plans that I believe will raise the standard of what we do to a whole new level. I believe it will make the perfect home for my team and me to create something very special.”

Guillaume said “Attilio Marinangeli is one of Sydney’s notable restaurateurs and Darcy’s has been an iconic restaurant for more than thirty eight years. I am grateful that Attilio is giving me the opportunity to establish my new restaurant in that beautiful restaurant space.”

“Like many Sydney- siders I have a strong sentimental attachment to Darcy’s. My wife and I dined there to celebrate the birth of our first daughter and we loved the intimate and elegant atmosphere. We have since had many happy occasions there and we now look forward to many more to come.”

The team at guillaume will include Bennelong’s talented head chef of 12 years, Jose Silva, as well as head sommelier and former Sydney Morning Herald Sommelier of the Year, Chris Morrison.

Having served over half a million diners since 2001, Brahimi’s current restaurant Guillaume at Bennelong will mark its last service on December 31st, New Year’s Eve, to be followed by the move to the new premises in Paddington.

Brahimi has operated some of Sydney’s most acclaimed restaurants since the early 1990s when he moved from Paris where he worked for Joel Robuchon. His restaurants have included two–hatted Pond in Potts Point, Quay, which earned three hats, and finally, since 2001, the three hatted Guillaume at Bennelong.

His restaurants have won the title of Australian Gourmet Traveller Restaurant of the Year and The Sydney Morning Herald’s Best New Restaurant as well as numerous other accolades, and in 2013 Guillaume was awarded the Vittoria Legend Award for outstanding contribution to the industry.

Brahimi currently operates two other restaurants, Bistro Guillaume in the Crown Entertainment Complex in Melbourne, and Bistro Guillaume in Crown Casino in Perth. He was appointed Culinary Director of Crown Resorts in May 2013. He is also ambassador for Tefal and Samsung.

Following Council approval, renovations will begin at the Paddington site in early January and guillaume will open prior to Easter 2014 at 92 Hargrave Street, Paddington, Sydney.

You know when I go underground, there’s always a good reason. This time it’s for something that I’ve been very proud of – Brooklyn Boy Bagels.

After 12 years of complaining that every bagel I’d ever seen in Australia was nothing like a real New York bagel – they were always too bready and fluffy, and rarely boiled – I decided to do something about it. I spent the past year learning how to make proper, artisan and handrolled bagels, including a couple of trips to New York and a surprisingly productive trip to San Francisco, working with a couple of top bagel-makers who were, naturally, transplants from the New York metro area. I spent a day with the No 1-rated Schmendricks, and I particularly have to thank Dan Graf of Oakland’s Baron Baking, who took me under his wing and showed me every single detail of his bagel-making process, which blends traditional techniques with some modern thinking.

I finally opened up my own pop-up in February, taking over one of my favourite small bars, Darlie Laundromatic in Darlinghurst, on Sundays. The opening day was insane and a complete surprise: before we’d even opened our doors, we had a line around the block down Palmer Street, and again down Foley Lane. If I was ever wondering whether Sydneysiders would take to authentic NYC bagels, I needn’t ever wonder again.

So what makes Brooklyn Boy Bagels so special? Well, they’re done the traditional way, using the same techniques that the Polish-Jewish immigrants did when they first brought bagels to New York in the late 19th Century, and then to the rest of America. My great-grandparents and grandmother were part of that immigration wave. They came through Ellis Island, lived in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and then found more space in Brooklyn. That’s where I was conceived – Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay. So you could say I was born with a bagel in my mouth.

So it’s not just a matter of New York pride, but also with a mind towards preserving my heritage that Brooklyn Boy Bagels are made using the following methods:

Hand-rolled: We form each and every bagel by hand, which produces sore shoulders, but also a tight dough that tastes like nothing any bagel-shaping machine can achieve

Boiled: Boiling is what makes a bagel a bagel, giving it its unmistakable crunch, flavour and texture. Don’t trust anyone who says a bagel tastes just as good steamed

Malt: We use top-quality malt for our bagels, which gives them their distinctive taste

Organic Stoneground Flour: Back in pre-industrialisation days, the original bagel makers didn’t have to worry about flour made with harsh pesticides. And thanks to our sourcing of top-quality organic stoneground flour from New England’s (New South Wales, that is) Wholegrain Milling, neither do you. Oh yeah, and the flour makes the bagels taste awesome, too!

Bagel Boards: We bake our bagels on both sides, flipping them over via handmade wooden bagel boards, which produce a fully rounded bagel from above and below. Next time you have a bagel from anywhere else, check out its flat underside. Ours have nice, rounded bums

Following up the success of our first pop-up, Brooklyn Boy is now back at Darlie Laundromatic for an extended run. So if you’re hungry any Sunday this month and fancy an authentic NY bagel, I’d love you to come by and have a taste of my native city. Here are the deets so you can find us:

Here’s one for my fellow food bloggers, journalists and hospitality friends. LinchpinSEO’s newly released infographics provide some interesting insights into the days that specific industries gain their greatest levels of interaction on Facebook. As it turns out, the weekend makes up the wide majority of responses for the food and beverage set, so if you’re out surfing, drinking, gorging on fish and chips, rewatching Season One of Girls, or avoiding the laptop in favour of a good book, you’re missing out on the peak times to reach your gluttonous public.

The top-line data also shows that there are higher response rates for post made between 8pm-7am. Being based in Sydney, I’m not sure if that holds true, or maybe it’s a sign that Aussies are doing their part to add to Facebook stalking while their Northern Hemisphere contemporaries are asleep. Or maybe it means we’re all avoiding going to bed by Facebook-liking all of our friend’s eat/drink happy snaps.

It’s also interesting to see that people who post more than seven times a week (which would, ahem, include your humble author), show a 25 percent decrease in interaction rates. Mind you, that can still work out in your favour if you’re allowing opportunities for 50 interactions per week, rather than just seven.

So what do you think of the graph below? Is it a clear sign to shift more posting activity to the weekends, or have you seen conflicting date or found your own Facebook-engagement stats to show a different story? Your fellow Facemongers want to know.

Surry Hills needs another café like it needs another old-school Lebanese eatery on Elizabeth Street, cheap-and-cheerful Indian on Cleveland, vintage clothing store on Crown, or red-light terrace… well, all over.

That is, until Reuben Hills arrived on New Year’s Day. Ever since, it’s been the café and roaster that we Surry Hillbillies never knew we needed.

I recently did a story on Reuben Hills on Agenda, so consider this an update. In the weeks following, I’ve been four more times – not the usual habits for a food journalist who seldom goes back to the same place twice in a year. There’s just too much good eating to do.

But I’m currently having a love affair of Reuben Hills. Unlike Sydney’s penchant for copycat café menus, there’s not a single Bill’s ripoff in sight: no creamy eggs, no ricotta hotcakes, no corn fritters. And there’s no big brekkie, either, or a single bit of toast. Everything on here is something original for Sydney. And it’s all cooked by Megan McCulloch, an almost too-talented chef for a café, who previously worked for Heston Blumenthal at his The Hinds Head, which the Michelin Guide deemed the UK’s 2011 pub of the year. Here she’s created a Latino-dominated menu that’s inspired by the places of origin of Reuben Hills’ coffee beans, which right now means Latin and South America. Will we eventually see Kenyan dishes here, I wonder?

The two types of Honduran baleada (bali-yay-duh) are a great way to have an inspiring brekkie. You’ve got a folded corn tortilla filled with pimenton-spiced pulled pork, chimol (an El Salvadoran salsa made with radish) and crispy-fried onion. The other is a mix of egg, queso fresco (a soft white cheese popular in Mexico) and black beans that will make you forget about those half-hearted breakfast burritos floating around town.

I first share a baleada with my dining companion, as we also tuck into terracotta-baked eggs with shaved Jamon Serrano, spinach and ranchero sauces, as well as a brioche with dulche de leche (its also comes with mascarpone, but I found it to be a second-fiddle accompaniment).

I’ve been back for lunch, for the fantastic reuben, a pairing of wagyu salt brisket, pickled slaw, manchego cheese and horseradish cream. Technically it’s not really a reuben – my New York deli rulebook says it has to be made with corned beef – but it’s stellar notheless. The brisket is brined for three days and slow-cooked for a good portion of another. When’s the last time you had that many man-hours go into your sandwich?

I’ve later been back for dessert, especially after discovering the salted caramel milkshake, which I have craved ever since. And where else does your café menu start with sweets? Atop the list is the Doggs breakfast, a housemade ice-cream sandwich with a cake-like chocolate exterior and a pour of salted caramel sauce. And while we’re talking sweet things, I also like the small touch of the sugar on your table: it’s panela, a brown sugar made from evaporate sugarcane juice and especially popular in Colombia.

That I’m focused on the food is an extra testament to Reuben Hills, since its main line of business is, in fact, coffee. Owner Russell Beard is the coffee dude who started tiny Mosman roastery, The Source, and he was a shining light in a North Shore coffee scene that has few heroes. But the space proved to be too small, so he upped stakes and took his spare cash to Surry Hills.

At Reuben, Russell is doing some serious bean biz. He’s built a spacious boutique roastery on the floor above the café, which can be seen through cut-out glimpses in the ceiling below (or you’re welcome to merely climb the stairs for a perve). He’s reconditioned a 30kg Probat and 6kg Giesen, German roasting machines that are a step up from the Turkish variety – for coffee snobs, it’s like upgrading from a Toyota to a Mercedes. And like some of my other favourite coffee folks, Russell is travelling to the source of his beans and meeting directly with farmers. In fact, he’s been tagging along with Mark Dundon of Melbourne’s Seven Seeds and Heath Cater from Coffee Supreme, making their way to Honduras, Columbia, Brasil, Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Russell doesn’t order through a coffee broker – he chooses his beans by the single lot in a face-to-face transaction.

Even with the caffeine dedication, there’s nothing pretentious about the coffee here. They do Clover and Aeropress filtered coffees, but never flaunt it, nor the artfully designed, dual Speedster and Mirage espresso machines from the Netherlands’ Kees Van Der Westen. Russell also holds free weekly coffee cuppings on Fridays at 10am, trying out beans that he roasts within small micro-roasting machines that allow for experimentation.

My favourite thing about Reuben Hills, though, is how the coffee and café community have treated this hot new start-up as a new addition to the family, rather than unwanted competition. Josh Nicholls from Café Ish, whose business is merely blocks away, excitedly told me about Reuben Hills when it launched on New Year’s Day. On a recent visit there, I founded the owners of Marrickville’s Coffee Alchemy, Randwick’s Kurtosh coffee and pastry house, Erskineville’s Shenkin café and a top barista from Mecca Espresso all happily dining and caffeinating here.

If you’re wondering about the name, it’s taken from a San Francisco-based pioneer in roasting equipment circa the early 1900s. Come here and you’ll also notice the menu’s striking black-and-white photo of roads, hills and a bridge – it’s simply a photo of Brazil, somewhere outside Sao Paolo, that Russell picked up in a market in Argentina.

I’d blabber or about the garage-like opening to the rear laneway, flouro lights, brick and cement industrial fit-out, but just go and soak it up yourself. And while I’ve nearly had the whole menu now, Russell says chef Megan is starting some specials this week. So the next time you’re here, look for a guy banging away on a laptop, putting a healthy teaspoon of panela into his latte, and ordering off the menu… and make sure to say hi.

It was a bit of a mad dash for the final week of the Malaysia Food Kitchen’s blogger summit. I’d just landed at Sydney International yesterday after 10 days travelling and eating through China, so I did as any good explorer does: I beelined for home, staggered into my apartment, and passed out on the couch.

I finally woke up bleary-eyed in the late afternoon, and through the jet-lag fog, suddenly realised that I needed to reconfirm dinner plans at Concord’s Jackie M restaurant. Luckily, some of my friends had already emailed me, including Leila from underground dining scene Tablenosh, and a mutual friend, Nikki. I also rounded up my Malaysian food expert Eunice, a long-term Sydney resident who’s a Malay native from the northern city of Ipoh.

I’d been hearing lots of good buzz about Jackie M’s midwest Sydney restaurant, and event Jackie herself had been quite active on Twitter when I was asking people for their top Malaysian eateries (even better that she talked about other people’s restaurants, rather than simply plugging her own).

So the four of us did something we never do – we went to Concord for dinner. That’s no mean feat when you’re pairing a couple of Surry Hillsbillies with two entrenched Inner Westies. There’s always a bit of inertia to overcome when escaping the comforts of central Sydney living.

Most of the drive down Lyons Road, as it eventually changes into Majors Bay Road, is residential, so the lights of Concord’s downtown strip appear like a nighttime oasis. As we enter Jackie M, the first thing that hits me is how small it is – there are just a handful of tables in a moody space with dark tables and splashes of red.

We wait for menus, then realise that they’re already splayed at the far end of the table. Even so, the service is fairly sluggish. When our server does arrive, though, she’s friendly, relaxed and helpful with suggestions. And we definitely need some advice to narrow down our all-too-greedy selection of shared plates.

We start with the ‘deluxe’ laksa nonya and the Hainanese chicken rice – the latter always being a good benchmark for a good Malaysian restaurant, and additionally listed as one of Jackie M’s signatures. The chicken arrives first, and it is beauty. The chicken slices are tenderly poached with a subtle fragrance, the chicken broth gives all the right notes for adding moisture and flavour to the rice, and the chilli-ginger sauce gives just enough kick. It’s the best example I’ve seen in Sydney to date.

Next comes the laksa. It’s a solid version, a comforting bowl of thick broth with large tofu cubes, half a boiled egg, fried shallots, bean sprouts and a mix of vermicelli and Hokkien noodles. The stock is a bit thicker than I’d like, and doesn’t have the same vibrant complexity of the beautiful laksa I discovered at Kensington’s Kaki Lima the other week, but it’s still enjoyable.

A mere minute later, the beef rendang and roti canai arrive. The beef is exactly what we want it to be: rich and fall-apart tender. In fact, the sauce is so thick and the beef so pliant, it’s often hard to figure out where one starts and the other begins. It hardly matters: the beef is delicious. And it’s perfectly paired with the roti. I’ve had few good versions aside from the wafer-light renditions at Mamak, but this is an exception. Jackie’s version is buttery and flaky – not as waif-like as Mamak’s, but with a richer flavour that keeps everyone at the table coming back to pull off more pieces to dip into the rendang sauce.

Eunice’s choice is the har meen: a noodle soup with a prawn stock with large prawns, chicken, egg, assorted greens and a generous sprinkling of fried shallots. The reviews at the table are mixed, but it’s likely a cultural thing. Eunice thoroughly enjoys the soup, while myself and the two other Westerners find the prawn stock’s fishy flavour too strong.

The top highlight of the meal arrives next: the chai tow kway, aka fried radish. The stir-fry features squares of shredded radish cake that are as tender as a fried square of silken tofu, and they come in a sweet-salty sauce clinging to preserved radish, garlic, beansprouts, Chinese chives and a scattering of egg. Groans of joy ensue, and we need to negotiate who eats the remaining pieces on the plate. It’s worth coming to Jackie M merely for this.

We polish off the night with dessert, sharing the ais chendol and a dessert roti with coconut. The chendol arrives with a sweet milky ‘soup’ swimming with teardrop strands of pandan, with a couple of icebergs of the still-frozen liquid floating in the centre. It also comes with a customary bowl of palm syrup, which we ladel into our bowls to take the dessert to even sweeter heights. The roti is nearly as uplifting, with a sweet coconut paste giving a stealth sweetness to the blankets of bread.

After a month of traversing the city’s Malaysian restaurants, this is the best meal I’ve had. I sneak into the kitchen to express thanks to Jackie, who’s rolling out dough for curry puffs. She’s a striking woman, with a platinum flash of short-cropped, youthful hair – not the staid nonya mama that I had envisioned in my head.

Then it’s time to call it a night. My fellow diners and I stagger back to our cars, bellies fully expanded, and weave our way back to our inner city confines, but happy in the thought of escaping our respective hoods for one excellent Malaysian feed.

A bit of Google fossicking and Twitter soliciting, and I get the nod from a number of food people I respect – the Sydney International Food Festival’s Joanna Savill being one of them – that cite Kaki Lima in Kensington as the best laksa joint in Sydders. So I pack up the laptop, hop onto the Vespa and beeline there for lunch to survey the stock for myself.

And what I discover isn’t what I expect of a place that’s potentially making our best bowl of Malaysian soup – aside from another solo diner, it’s empty. I spend half of my meal wondering if there’s no day trade in this stretch of Kensington, until a chat with my friendly server helps illuminate me. “It’s Ramadan this month; that’s why it’s so quiet,” she explains.

Apparently everyone else, aside from a nice agnostic Jewish boy like me, is fasting for the holy month. Mariam – yes, my server and I have now been formally acquainted, as we’re two out of the only three people in the room – directs me to the evening’s paper-inscribed special: a Ramadan feast with a choice of main, dessert and drink, all for for a whopping $15. It looks like I can afford to come back in the evenings, when the hungry hordes come out after 5.30pm to have their post-fasting fill.

For now, it’s all about the laksa. And what’s curious is that the laksa isn’t even on the main menu, but rather on the specials board. Still, it is the first thing Mariam suggests when I ask her for some favourites, and I’m offered a choice of chicken, seafood or prawn. I go with the chicken, plus another plate of nasi lemak with beef randang for a bit of variety.

The laksa is as good as advertised. It’s rich but not overly creamy, the broth a vibrant orange from sambal paste, with blood-orange droplets from the coconut and vegetable oils. It’s filled with spongy triangles of rehydrated dried tofu, thin rice vermicelli noodles, camouflaged bean sprouts and two diagonal slices of green chilli. There are also cucumber batons that aren’t always cut through, so they’re sometimes joined together and look like fat Freddy Krueger fingers. Hey, it might not pass a TAFE knife skills exam, but with so much flavour in my bowl, I can overlook finesse.

There’s also a complexity in the broth that I can’t quite taste, so owner/chef Aida later informs me that it’s got a subtle layer of lemongrass in there. It’s probably why there’s enough acidity that I ignore the lemon wedge that floats on the far edge. Other ingredients include garlic, dried prawn and tamarind juice. “It’s not like a nyonya laksa,” Aida says, noting that the Chinese often use evaporated milk instead of coconut. “It’s more like Malacca style.”

Yes, the laska is a stunner, and true to its reputation. In fact, the only rival I can think of thus far is an old favourite from Melbourne – Blue Chillies in Fitzroy.

The nasi lemak, however, is simply serviceable. The coconut rice is fine, and a sprinkling of fried red shallots on top are so pungent, I nearly think they’re ginger… in a pleasing way. The paired beef rending is tender yet mild and undistinguished, while the halves of hardboiled egg have plenty of green around the yolk, a sign of overcooking (or, more likely, a lack of quick cooling afterwards). It’s also hard to distinguish the beef from the similar-hued ikan bilis, or dried anchovy sambal – the latter is chunky with whole anchovies, also mild and conjures childhood smells of fish food (for the guppies and angel fish, not me). With the rending and sambal, I’m craving some chilli heat.

As I tuck in, the sound of passing buses on Anazc Parade consistently hums behind me, slightly offset by Pearl Jam politely playing on the speakers. There are old black-and-white photos of Malaysia grouped together on a wall, while tiny faux birds dwell in half cages surrounding lights – switched off while the afternoon sunlight radiates through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. The tables are covered in clear plastic, protecting colourful tablecloths endowed with flower patterns. it’s a kaleidoscope of tables that ranges from violet to lime, midnight blue, black and rose.

Two dishes mean that I’ve already overeaten, but I can’t pass up dessert. There are a handful of sweet offerings in a glass display by the counter, so I peruse the pandan- and tapioca-dominated serves. I go for the baked pandan custard, a Kermit-green square of spongy goodness. It’s a delicate taste, an intermingling of coconut milk, sugar and pandan flavour. Just as much taste comes from the sesame seed topping, but my favourite part are the browned edges that have a whisper of custard about them.

The laksa and dessert are enough to make me want to return, so I listen to Aida as she recommends I come back for her satay, her Indian Muslim-style northern fish curry and for her teh tarik (Malaysia sweet tea). Until she tells me she started the restaurant as a Malaysian coffee house, I hadn’t even considered that the drinks were a specialty. Plus there are several other sweets to try, so I’m determined to have enough repeat visits to get through them one-by-one. As you do.